Dennis Rawlins

Dennis Rawlins (DR), preparing a 1966 ms on the Brit theft of planet Neptune, was amazed to find that Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers' 1802 recovery of Ceres (asteroid #1: discovered by G.Piazzi 1801/1/1, but later lost for months), as well as Olbers' discoveries of Pallas (1802) and of Vesta (1807), ALL occurred in the same square degree of the sky. (E&E 1800.0: Rt.Asc. 184°-185°, Decl. 11°-12°.) Since the sky contains 41253 (129600/π) square degrees, this is an ordmag billion-to-1 coincidence. Thus, it may help explain the origin of Olbers' theory (which he discussed even before capturing Vesta) that the asteroids came from a destroyed planet between Mars & Jupiter, since all fragments of an explosion or an encounter would regularly return to the place of occurrence.
[Olbers perhaps also noted that orbital inclinations (of the 4 asteroids he ever knew of) averaged 16°, much higher than then-known planets'. Asteroid #2 (Pallas) has way greater orbital inclination (35°!) than any other serious asteroid in the Mars-Jupiter gap. Upper-right map: from late-1960s version of original 1966 Dennis Rawlins ms, based upon Berlin Starchart Hour 12 (E&E 1800.0; ruled at degree intervals [Mercator-style, so the magic “square” shown is actually 2% less than a square degree]). The pair of orange dots are for Ceres: right dot is at Franz von Zach's first certain-recovery spot (1801/12/31); left dot, Olbers' (next night). The orange cross is the 12/31 position (correct to about 1°/4) predicted for Ceres by Gauss, using his newly discovered Method of Least Squares. The green dot is Pallas' discovery-position (1802/3/28). The red dot is Vesta's discovery-position (1807/3/29).]
[Many years ago, DR spent some fun time finding in the sky all of the 1st four asteroids — including Vesta with the unaided eye. Some of this enjoyable hunt was carried out with the Clark refractor of Goucher College and the assistance of Goucher's Sally Dieke.]
The Gauss geocentric ecliptical ephemeris (1801/11/25 to 12/31 at 6 day intervals) can be found at, e.g., Zach's Monatliche Correspondenz 1801 December p.647.
[The DIO 1.1 [1991] inside front cover cited (as Upcoming) a DIO paper on “Olbers' Magic-Square-Degree and destroyed-planet hypothesis”; but other papers have been nudging it aside since. However, DR's longago dream of accomplishing a detailed account of the fascinating history of early asteroid-discovery is fortunately being realized by another: Florida's Clifford J. Cunningham (305-940-8778; starlab@the-beach.net). DR is grateful as few others can be for Cliff's ongoing dedicated & thought-provoking asteroid-history researches, now in the process of appearing in 4 detailed volumes (Star Lab Press, P.O.Box 547232, Surfside, FL 33154), each discussed & illustrated with the obvious scrupulousness of one who understandably loves this period of science. Available so far:
The First Asteroid — Ceres 1801-2001 (©2002) Foreward by Paul A. Feldman;
Jousting for Celestial Glory (©2004).]

The famous University of Jena philosophy professor G.W.F.Hegel's 1st published academic paper ended with his attempt to justify the supposed large gap between Mars & Jupiter (which appeared to defy the already well-known Titius-Bode rule), by drawing a series of 7 numbers out of Plato's Timaeus, fiddling one of its members (Jupiter), taking each number to the 4/3 power, then fiddling another planet's number (Mercury). [The resulting fit to reality is poor, anyway — much worse than Titius'.] (This unexceedably-bonkers scheme ended up embarrassing both Hegel and the almost-as-astronomically-talented Lord Hoskin and His Journal for the History of Astronomy: see DIO 1.2 [1991] n.60 [p.110].) Traditional popular accounts of the Hegel-Ceres farce had of course tacitly assumed that Hegel had published before Ceres' discovery. But, in fact, Hegel published his theory on 1801/8/27 (his 31st birthday), the better part of a year AFTER Ceres had been discovered by the Palermo Observatory's Giuseppi Piazzi (1801/1/1). Worse, DR found that Ceres' multiple sightings by Piazzi had even been announced by J.Bode (1801/5/6) in the local Jena Literary Gazette! (News also published in Berlin 5/12 & Hamburg 5/13. All three notices cited at Monatliche Correspondenz vol.3 p.607 [1801 June].)

In 1966, Dennis Rawlins became suspicious of the standard British account of Cambridge University mathematician John Couch Adams' allegedly pinpoint 1845 gravitational prediction of as-yet-undiscovered Neptune's place. After presenting a detailed analysis as a paper (to Johns Hopkins University's History of Science Dep't 1966/5/11) challenging Adams' claim and emphasizing the oddity of Cantab secrecy prior to Frenchman Leverrier's success, DR continued intensive research on the case throughout the late 1960s. Planning a book on the Neptune saga, DR for over three years (starting 1967/4/1) contacted the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO), trying to obtain access to the long-private RGO file on the Neptune case. (Correspondence published at DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡10 §E etc.) The RGO went through years of back&forth alibis for not sending anything at all, while the Astronomer Royal's chief confidante and chief appointed Neptune-affair defender removed the file, taking it to Australia and then to Chile, hiding it from researchers for over 30 years. The reasons for the file's long disappearance became clear when it finally surfaced in 1998, after it was found in the home of the recently deceased concealer, who (right to the end) had denied possessing it.
[Did Astronomer Royal Wooley's death unexpectedly leave the concealer holding the bag?]

In 1967, Dennis Rawlins recovered a long-lost pre-discovery 1714 observation of Uranus, made by John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal.
(PASP 80 pp.217-219 [1968]; Science News 95 p.96 [1969]. Chas. Kowal [now of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab & DIO] and DR are the only living recoverers of pre-discovery observations of major planets. For CK's discovery [Neptune 1613, by Galileo!], see any college astronomy textbook. Also DIO 2.3 [1992] p.98. Kowal's amazing and ever-unique find made him a clear choice as the first Recipient [2004] of DIO's R. R. Newton Award for Scientific History. See under DIO Prizes.)

At the soon-after suggestion of DR and Sky&Telescope Editor Joe Ashbrook, Joachim Schubart searched the Mannheim Observatory records of Roger Barry, finding that Barry's transit-work came close to recording a place of Neptune in 1810 — but narrowly missed.

In 1967-1968, Dennis Rawlins used optical calculations to eliminate the theory that Pluto might be a reflecting-iceball, a theory which had been proposed to explain how Pluto could indeed be 0.91 Earth-masses — then the official USNO value — yet still appear (like a crystal ball) to have a tiny light-disk (as G.Kuiper had found by observation through the Mt.Palomar 200-inch telescope). Showed that Pluto's mass-estimate should be altered from 0.91 to negligible (crude estimate: 0.03 Earth-masses, later 1/40 of an Earth-mass — both actually too high, as we now know), effectively zero — thus rendering utterly fortuitous the Percival Lowell “prediction” of Pluto's place & orbital elements, even though these elements were remarkably near the truth. (Sky&Telescope 38 [1968 March] pp.160-162; Astronomical Journal 75 [1970 September] pp.856-857; Mon. Not. Royal Astronomical Society 162 [1973] pp.261-270.) Vindicated 1976&1978, when Pluto's high reflectivity & minuscule mass were confirmed by direct observation.

Dennis Rawlins charged publicly in 1969 that Britain's allegedly-pinpoint Neptune-“discoverer”, Cantab John Couch Adams, had at the time of discovery (1846/9/23) actually been directing Cantab searcher James Challis way off the mark (Sky&Telescope 38 pp.180-182 [1969]). [Adams' final theoretical planet was south of all Berlin Starcharts (DIO 9.1 [1999] p.17), even while the real Neptune was retrograding through stars on a Berlin map (Hour 22) in Challis' possession (below).] Unambiguous confirmation (Adams' explicit private 1846/10/15 alibi for the misdirection) found in newly recovered RGO Neptune File. (Details: DIO 9.1 [1999] p.16.)

In this connexion, it's worth recalling that Rawlins had been 1st to question the validity of Adams' claim on the basis of the enormity of the swings in Adams' predicted longitudinal positions for Neptune, ranging over 35°! — from 350° (1845 Spring) down to 315° finally (1846/9/2). Such unsettling factors summarized at DIO 9.1 [1999] n.20 [pp.7-8].

Used vector calculus to devise formula for evaluating a noon-Sun-aimed polar traveler's azimuthal divergence from his intended meridian, as a function of his unchecked lateral distance from it. (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 1970 June p.36.)

Visited Paris Observatory (1970/8/18) and spent most of a day hunting down the original observation-books of Pierre Lemonnier (who 12 times unwittingly saw Uranus & recorded its place) and Michel Lefrançais Lalande (who similarly missed Neptune, twice in 2 days: 1795/5/8&10). Lemonnier's fifty-eight years of ms observations (1734/12/23-1792/9/16) ran to sixteen volumes of dedicated labor. Starting around the mid-19th-century, Lemonnier's notorious 1750/10/14-1771/12/18 dozen recordings of Uranus' place were increasingly sniggered-at by hand-me-down historians, as due to the slovenly record-keeping of a ditzy incompetent. (The trend included the cute tale that he had recorded one of the tragic Uranus dozen upon a bag formerly containing powder for his wig: perhaps the sort of rumor which post-Revolution historians enjoyed telling of royalists.) DR checked every one of the dozen, finding that all 12 were entered completely properly: in a continuous pre-bound register, in ink. Beside the 1768/12/27 record was Lemonnier's sad later scribbling: “It is the new planet discovered in 1781 13th March by Herschell” [sic].
(Record photo-reproduced: Astronomy 9.9 [1981 Sept] p.26.)

Found that John Herschel had accidently seen Neptune the night of 1830/7/14 (during sweeps for his stellar researches), but couldn't resolve its disk at such low altitude. (Idem.)
[In late 1846, JH openly stated he'd come close to bagging Neptune on this date, believing it simply hadn't crossed his field of view — but Dennis Rawlins wondered if JH's check had used an incorrect early Neptune orbit, since the time was before the 1847/2/2-4 recovery of Lalande's 1795 observation by USNO's Sears Walker, who immediately used it to compute the first trustworthy orbit for Neptune.]
DR found that according to the planet's actual orbit, Neptune passed within J.Herschel's 1830/7/14 field. Had JH discovered Neptune, history would have credited the only two Solar System giant-planet discoveries to father&son! — a delightfully felicitous tale. Yet, as JH selflessly stated at the time, we would have missed an even more powerful story: the legendary Leverrier's ever-unique mathematical inductive-chasing-down and publicly pinpointing the place of an as-yet-undiscovered giant planet. See DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 [pp.3ff].]

In 1970, showed that the two unrecognized 1795/5/8&10 observations of Neptune by Lefrançais Lalande were incompatible with the 1968 USNO orbit (Astronomical Journal 75 [1970] pp.856-857), whatever the cause.

Slightly contra DIO 2.3 [1992] p.98: the two Lalande sightings of Neptune can't be called entirely accidental (as were Lemonnier's Uranus sightings), since Lalande's famous catalog was accomplished partly to flush out a new planet “Lalande”. (DIO 7.1 [1997] p.27 & notes.) He unfailingly called Uranus “Herschel”.

DR even recovered a manuscript note by the observers (Lefrançais Lalande & Johann Burckhardt) — right in the original Lalande record-book (Paris Observatory) — stating explicitly that their 2nd sweep of the sky (starting in 1800 late Summer) was “to discover a planet beyond Herschel, if there exists one ….” (ibid n.7).

Spotlighted (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 1970 June pp.36-37) the incredibility of:

1. Then-universally-accepted 1909 North Pole-claimant Robert E. Peary's alleged 10 mile jaunt beyond his “Pole” camp, though he had still not yet sextant-confirmed his steering to it.

2. His sextant-shot (during this sally) at 70°W-midnight, the one time during the 24 hours between noons when the Sun's altitude would not tell him whether that steering had been valid.
   [Note that Peary's 1909/4/6-7 alleged sextant data lack shots in opposite directions from the same spot. (The midnight shot was reported as having been taken roughly 10 nmi beyond the point [Camp Jesup] of all the other purported shots.) This was superficially-clever in that it guarded against his being tripped up by errors in his assumptions regarding refraction or ice-drift-rate. But there is no purpose for such a omission except to safeguard a hoax. And the attendant unfalsifiability is so transparently manicured and so typical of this phantom trip, that it helps explain why genuine scientists do not take it seriously.]

The latter extreme oddity was part of Peary's previously-unremarked cautious tactic of sticking strictly to observations at the day's quarters (12 o'clock or 6 o'clock on his alleged 70°W incoming meridian of longitude), thereby only claiming “observations” which could be faked by simple arithmetic, not even requiring plane trig. (The badly manufactured “N.Pole” data in Frederick Cook's 1911 My Attainment of the [North] Pole pp.292&302 were rigged by exactly the same giveaway needlessly-rigid quarter-day schedule. By contrast, the Amundsen expedition's 1911 South Pole observations [for solar altitude & compass variation] were around the clock [and shared], since that was a real trip.)

Despite Peary's claim that he had only 2000 fathoms of sounding wire in 1909, Dennis Rawlins found (Polar Notes 10 [1970] p.38 [Stefansson Collection, Dartmouth College]) that the 1908-1909 Peary expedition was supplied with 4000 fathoms of such line — half of which (weighing merely 13 lbs [at most]) he'd found an excuse not to take — when heading poleward over an ocean known to be deeper than 2000 fathoms in many regions.
From the 1909 Peary Expedition's Bottom-less Pit of Anomalies:
Nonetheless, Peary (after losing 500 more fathoms on the way) ended up at his “Pole” camp with merely 1500 fathoms of line, and so got nothing more than a no-bottom sounding. (Thus, as in the realm of magnetism, his “Ninety-Degree-North” 1909 alleged N.Pole expedition produced zero precise new scientific data from anywhere north of 86°N latitude.)
This bottom-line or no-bottom-line of his 1909 expedition's scientific sterility was summed up at idem endnote o [p.51]

As we have seen [above], over a half-dozen different tests [of the 1909 claim] might have been possible: shared [sextant] observations, witness to [own sextant] data, compass variation, ocean depth, current, photo shadows, internally consistent [sextant] observations at the Pole, or consistent data and journal [April 1-9]. Somehow, not one of these tests can be applied to the 1909 trip.
The kindest possible conclusion (not my own, I might add) is: Peary's claim is completely unsubstantiated and thus should be completely dropped (à la Copenhagen [regarding Cook]), for, even if he did achieve the Pole, he might as well not have; and accepting [such a scientifically profitless and unverifiable claim] might later encourage those less upright than the Admiral to take advantage of the precedent set by official allowance of the lights-out conditions under which the feat was allegedly performed.

Dennis Rawlins Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction [1973] p.154 noted:

1. If one can navigate a trip from celestial data, one can fake celestial data from an imagined trip; the math is the same type. (The standard navigational method of Peary's day [the St.Hilaire method] actually required faking celestial data en-route to solving for position.)

2. It is easier to fake celestial data than to use it in genuine navigation. [Except very near the poles, where the math in either direction is such trivially simple arithmetic that there's little to choose: “to say that [faking] near-polar [sextant] observations … is trickier than using genuine data is tantamount to saying that addition is more difficult than subtraction.”] (Polar Notes 10 [1970] p.35. See also DIO 10 [2000] p.32 n.62.)

3. The easiest places on Earth for which to fake data are the poles.

Dennis Rawlins showed how the fancy-looking (& expensive) pages&pages of spherical trig determinations of Peary's alleged location near the Pole (given in full at Wm.Hobbs Peary 1936 pp.466-475), designed to impress Congress (& secretly funded by Peary: Rawlins Peary … Fiction [1973] p.238) could be accomplished in just a few lines of gradeschool arithmetic. The results agreed to about 1 meter! — a tiny fraction of a great-circle arcsec. (See this simple arithmetic actually performed at Polar Notes 10 [1970] p.35.)

Revealed that Matthew Henson's account (Boston American 1910/7/17) of Peary's 1909/4/6-7 activities near his “North Pole” camp confirm most explorers' and navigators' longheld suspicions that it was far from the Pole: Peary made no sextant observations during the last five marches, largely led by non-navigator Henson. (Whom Peary was privately denouncing as a slacker [DIO 1.1 [1991] p.25 & n.16] and whose recognition has always been violently mis-estimated in one direction or another.)
Henson's 1910 account included his reports that Peary's 4/6-7 sextant shots triggered “disappointment” and that he suddenly went effectively silent towards Henson (who had faithfully served him for 22 years) right from this allegedly glorious moment — the very same moment when Peary (whose story was obviously still in-flux) also got silent to his diary for days of blank pages. (See DIO 10 [2000] §O15 and nn.141&142. See also the long-suppressed 1910/4/1 note to Peary from his beautiful secret ghostwriteress: Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] Appendix p.284 [& p.61]. And see Henshaw Ward's invaluable account of the Bowdoin navigator secretly living at Peary's home during the 1909 Autumn weeks when he was preparing to meet his NGS judges: ibid pp.285f.) Peary henceforth avoided conversation with Henson. For the rest of their lives. (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 1970 June p.40; Polar Notes 10 [1970] pp.42-43; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973]; DIO 1.1 [1991] pp.23f [see below]; DIO 7.1 [1997] pp.23-24 & DIO 10 [2000] p.5 n.)

First to bring modern magnetic science successfully to bear upon the checking of historical polar reports. (This was the empirical criterion that initially caused DR to doubt the Peary 1909 claim. See also Cagni and Cook.)

1. Along the very 413 nautical mile route (from 83°07'N to 90°N, along 70°W) which Peary said he'd beeline-traveled straight to the North Pole (allegedly steering within 1° of right-on), we now know that the compass variation in 1909 changed (increasingly leftward) by more than 10°, but Peary in 1909 admitted to Congress that he took no compass-variation data (the only one of his 8 expeditions to omit such), even though he said (R.Peary The North Pole 1910 pp.211, 276, 294) that his steering was accomplished by compass. (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 1970 June. Thorough citations supplied at: Polar Notes 10 [1970] pp.36, 49, 52; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.91, 137, 132, 226-228, 234; DIO 1.1 [1991] p.24; DIO 7.1 [1997] p.24 n.22.)

2. Explorers Frederick Cook (1908) & Rob't Peary (1909) claimed that at their allegedly-conquered North Geographical Pole, the compass pointed at or near the North Magnetic Pole. (From such pseudoscience followed Cook's fantastic “magnetic meridian”.) Dennis Rawlins determined that in 1908-1909 the compass at the NGP actually pointed roughly 30° to the right of the NMP.
   (Polar Notes 10 [1970] pp.36, 52; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.91, 226.)

3. Professional explorers' politely muted but eventually wide doubts of Peary's claim presumably arose directly out of his long-putoff 1911 congressional testimony, when he was finally (after the huge profits his N.Pole hoax had brought in from lectures, magazine series, & book were safely in the bank) forced to admit that he had in 1909 taken no compass data. One need not speculate regarding what an independent scientific body would have made of that item, given the reaction of the chief navigation expert (longtime Copenhagen Navigationsdirektor, Commodore J. A. D. Jensen) of the Danish commission that in 1909 rejected Cook's 1908 N.Pole hoax: “There is nothing in Dr.Cook's [1908] records to show that he made azimuth observations. In the arctic regions, where variations of the compass are most important [being large and varying from place to place] — the compass is of little use unless its variations are controlled [checked by fresh determinations] at short intervals. When one realizes that Dr.Cook [nonetheless] set his course to the pole by the compass, the most fantastic suppositions as to his wanderings are possible.” (Polar Notes 10 [1970] p.52; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.132.)
   [In 1909 September, Denmark trustingly elevated Cook, but it destroyed him in December. By an odd coincidence, Denmark's top composer Carl Nielsen and Cook were born on consecutive days: 1865/6/9&10. More precise and odder coincidences are cited at DIO 8.2 [1998] pp.48-50. Also: DR's father Lou was born on the very day Harry Thaw (Harvard class of 1892) murdered top US architect Stanford White (and got-off on “temporary-insanity”, proving that temporarily-insane juries are not a novel blight), which was exactly the 30th anniversary of Custer's end. DR's critics may find significance in the fact that his progenitor's birth occurred in calendaric connexion with a day of killings by Crazy Horse and Crazy Harry.]

Defended Russian explorers Otto Schmidt & Ivan Papanin from unjust US attack upon the veracity of their report of & results from their 1937 flight to 89°1/2 N latitude. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.276-277.)

Corrected a few serious errors in the otherwise excellent gravitational math of the eminent astronomers Ernest Brown & Raymond Lyttleton. (Mon. Not. Royal Astronomical Society 147 pp.177-186 [1970].)

Building upon E.Brown's brilliant transformation, Dennis Rawlins discovered (idem) circular-orbit perturbation-amplitude's dependence upon distance, with precise expressions for asymptotic behavior at distance-extremes (at p.185: for coefficient 11/3, read 11/4; typo was DR's, not RAS'):
[a] close-up: log times inverse-square;
[b] long-distance: inverse-cube.

Applied above two findings to end over a century of competent (vs. DIO 7.1 [1997] ‡5 §A9 [p.26]) astronomers' misguided doubts regarding the legitimacy of Leverrier's uniquely wonderful 1846 predictive discovery of Neptune, by demonstrating mathematically that his error in Neptune's distance was balanced by his math's automatic adjustments of the perturber's other orbital elements and mass. (See Mon. Not. Royal Astronomical Society 147 pp.177-186 [1970] pp.185-186.) These researches also later proved useful for showing the nonexistence of the sensational “Brady Planet”, and as a starting point for a staid, responsible trans-Neptune planet perturbation-math search.

In 1971, Dennis Rawlins circulated a paper examining the recent USNO analysis of post-discovery observations of Neptune, which had re-estimated Pluto at 0.11 Earth-Moon masses (EM) plus-or-minus 0.02EM (using a curious weighting scheme that particularly emphasized the latest residuals). DR noted that, if weighted evenly, the USNO residuals actually indicated a Pluto mass that was exceeded by its own uncertainty: 0.026EM plus-or-minus 0.043EM. Thus, perturbation-theory told us nothing about Pluto's mass except that it was perturbationally negligible. Such had been implied at the conclusion of DR's 1970 paper on the 1795 Neptune residual (Astronomical Journal 73 pp.856-857), where he compares the over-high USNO value published in late 1968 (0.18 Earth masses) not to his own tiny estimate (1/40 of Earth+Moon, a value that was obviously extremely crude in relative terms) but rather just to a mass of flat zero.

At DR's instigation, the American Geographical Society's archivist Lynn Mullins examined (letter 1971/9/20) the 1860-1861 records of US explorer and north latitude record-claimant Isaac Israel Hayes — finding that a key leaf (“Bearings” [HB] pp.29-30), right at his 1861/5/18 alleged Farthest-North-Land attained, has been scissored out of the book. (Hayes' 1860-1861 expedition drew wider public US academic institution support than any other, ever: the list of eminent subscribers runs pages: see I. I. Hayes Open Polar Sea [1867] pp.xi-xvi.) Lynn found that Hayes' journal is blank for his whole trip northward away from his Port Foulke base: between 1861/4/10 & 5/29. She generously sent DR photocopies of the central portion of HB.

Historians have by now unanimously rejected Hayes' claim of having achieved a Farthest-North-Land record on Canada's east coast at 81°35'N 70°30'W.
[As he proudly states (Hayes Open Polar Sear 1867 p.344), the claimed latitude barely exceeds the also grossly (if less) exaggerated E.Kane-W.Morton 1854 claim of planting the US flag past 81°N — an alleged farthest-north land, which is mapped by Hayes (ibid p.72 opp) at 80°41' (Kane 1856 2:383), a degree south of himself on the same map. So Hayes knew Kane had exaggerated. Given Kane's 1857 post-humous super-patriotic exaltation, might Hayes have had reason to believe it was no bar to immortality to stretch latitude for glory? — especially Old Glory.]
This geographical point is deep-inland, not coastal. The alleged attainment was via sudden alleged high-speed last-leg sledging — the first of four highly similar and independently-suspicious Arctic claimed record-farthests, where we note that, in all four cases, the Farthest's sextant data were unshared. [The other cases: Cagni 1900, Peary 1906, Peary 1909. Note also that, though not alleging sudden speed-bursts (unless we count Byrd's helpful homeward wind, allegedly appearing just in time to whisk him swiftly homeward: DIO 10 [2000] Fig.11 [p.72]), the fake F.Cook 1908 & R.Byrd 1926 N.Pole claims were also based on unshared sextant data. Needless to say, the Pole data of Amundsen 1911&1926 and Scott 1912 were shared, since their expeditions' paths were entirely genuine.]

In 1972 May, DR was 1st to declare the nonexistence of Livermore Lab's much-publicized jovian-mass “Brady Planet”. (When phoned by the press the very day of the Jos. Brady announcement, DR used [over the phone, via slide-rule] his 1970 Roy. Astr. Soc. paper's perturbational curves to find that Brady's proposed mass was vastly too high, and this judgement appeared immediately in the Baltimore Evening Sun. The overly huge (& secularly-unstable-orbit) Brady object is now definitely known to be nonexistent.

In 1972, DR used microscopic needle-perforations through the contents of an allegedly prediction-containing envelope, to reveal that the crowning event in the college-audience-circuit “psychic” act of R.Burgess was merely a magic trick. The press showed unaccustomed boldness in reportage on this; but the dean of the college in question ducked involvement, and a member of the faculty (who'd seen the unambiguous evidence) was quoted as saying: all right, all right, that effect was fake, but other parts of the same evening's act seemed real.
Such refinement of invincible credulity has been common to the ESP-brained at least since the cases of Eusapia Palladino & Arthur Ford. (Skeptical Inquirer 2.1 [1977] pp.74-75.)

DR showed that F.Cook's alleged 1908 sextant observations, if treated seriously, put him on another planet: found that Cook's unshared 1908 sextant data were corrected for 9' refraction, a value copied from Peary — a backfired theft, since 9' refraction was correct for Peary's alleged 7° solar altitudes but not for Cook's 12° solar altitudes, where 5' would be right. This is why Cook's data [Cook 1911 p.302] “which he thought placed him (with amazing precision) within about one mile of the Pole for well over 24 hours straight, instead demand that he must have hovered for that period, four miles sunward of the Pole, while the Earth spun just beneath his feet. The indication that Cook was riding a flying saucer is not to be taken lightly — e.g., his only doublelimb solar altitudes ([1908] 4/8 and 4/14) [Cook 1911 pp.258&274] make the Sun's apparent diameter 1°/4 (not 1°/2, as it appears from the Earth), thus placing him about two Astronomical Units from the Sun, presumably on the planet Vesta.” (Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 26 [1972] p.135 [Norwegian Geographical Society; Oslo University].)

In 1972, DR analysed the claims of Dr. I. Velikovsky, who claimed to have explained the miracles of the Bible by astronomical collisions & catastrophes, and whose book Worlds in Collision [Macmillan 1950] had been censored (via threatening a textbook boycott of Macmillan) by some prominent astronomers, which helped V develop a cult following — and sell a great many more books — by switching WC to Doubleday, which had no textbook division. (Never approving of such tactics, DR had openly defended the loony V-crowd's right to advertise in Sky&Telescope. But S&T refused the proposed ads. And DR's name did not stain the pages of that fair&impersonal journal for the next 1/3 of a century.) DR's 1972 ms (rev. 1974) was titled: “Freudian Astronomy, or Do Planetary Orbits, Bristlecone Pines, and Velikovsky's Believers Suffer from Collective Amnesia”? DR noted:

1. Delicate bristlecone pines predate V's last proposed world-searing catastrophe but show no sign of its effect.

2. Orbits have better memories than bibles:

   1. Planets involved in V's hypothesized planetary interactions would most probably be thrown into durably-tilted orbits with high inclination, but all of his colliding planets in fact have orbits virtually in the plane of the Solar System.

   2. If Venus was once at Jupiter's distance, it would keep returning there, on an elliptical orbit. But Venus' orbit is the most circular in the Solar System, and its mean distance from the Sun varies over centuries by a distance so small that one could walk it in a few minutes.

3. Dr.Velikovsky was primarily a psychoanalyst, whose most prominent paper (Psychoanalytic Review 1941) in that pseudoscientific field had attempted to show from dream analysis (which A.Salter rightly compared to playing poker with every card wild) that Sigmund Freud secretly longed to be a Christian!
   (Curiously, astronomers had not previously been aware of this delicious paper.)
   [Barbara Rawlins notes that the paper conveniently appeared right after Freud (born same day as mom-fixated Rob't Peary: 1856/5/6) was safely dead (1939).]
   Anyone still taking classic shrinkoanalysis seriously might usefully consult Frederick Crews' Memory Wars [1995] p.37, on Freud's shameless practice of letterwriting or even snoozing, while a wealthy divorcée was traditionally-selfabsorbedly babbling away on the traditional couch. (Traditionally set so that the patient looks in the opposite direction from the shrink.)
   [See also Crews' sendup-collection book: Pooh Perplex [1963] Chap.11, esp. “A. A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex” by “Karl Anschauung, M. D.”]
   In his Worlds in Collision's psychoanalysis of early man's dreamy mythology (deftly spoofed as “Worlds in Collusion” in Ira Wallach Hopalong Freud [1951]), Velikovsky claimed to be historically remedying primitive civilizations' “collective amnesia”, his thinly veiled marriage of psychoanalysis' “dissociative amnesia” to C.Jung's “collective unconscious”.

Many years after DR had given “Freudian Astronomy” to a few people, the world's leading expert on the Velikovsky ex-controversy, C. Leroy Ellenberger, dug a copy out of his old files and found that many of the most compelling and simple logical arguments against V had appeared years earlier, right in that obscure unpublished 1970s DR ms. (A former V-advocate, Ellenberger was gratuitously attacked for this recently by Journal for the History of Astronomy Advisory Editor Bradley Schaefer, who was protecting an earlier smear by launching another.) So Ellenberger began distributing copies widely — which hopefully did some good. (See Ellenberger's ironic and historic article on the ever-complaining-of-censorship V-cult's crude censoring of him: DIO 7.1 [1997] pp.30-33.)

First to note that Peary's sole alleged 1909/4/5 zeroing-in observation for navigating to “the Pole” was not among the data submitted by him to the International Geographical Congress in 1913, a submission accompanied by the statement that all his 1909 data were included. (For the credibility of his navigational story, the purported 4/5 sextant work was the most crucial of all his 1909 alleged data.) Though mentioned in Peary's 1909 diary, the 4/5 record has never been found; and at his 1911 congressional hearings, Peary denied its very existence. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.143-144, 150, 231-232.)

First to reveal huge 1910 secret split in the Royal Geographical Society board, on giving Peary its gold medal. Only 8 of 35 members voted “For” — and at a nonquorum meeting, at that. (Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 26 [1972] n.25; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.237. Wisely & revealingly, RGS declined to publish its own [curiously spiritualist: ibid p.61] surveying instructor's credulous report.)

After his expedition's lightly-loaded lead-sledge had made only 13 miles/day on the previous 5 marches, Peary with full sledges allegedly made astonishing 1909/4/1-9 speeds: from April Fool Camp (4/1, where he left the last other navigator in the party, Bob Bartlett [who headed south from there]), over 25 miles/day to his “North Pole” camp (4/6-7, where sextant data were of course unshared); and back at over 50 miles/day to Bartlett Camp (4/9). Unlike many analysts, DR carefully took the least fragile line of attack upon these ridiculous claimed speeds by comparing them primarily not to mortal explorers (& dogs) but to Peary. (Note analogy to Cook-vs-Cook: DIO 9.3 [1999] p.122.) Theorizing that [i] the rest of the trip was real, and [ii] Peary did not conspire with anyone, DR emphasized that all Peary's suspect speeds are north of April Fool Camp (which was at least 135 nautical miles from the N.Pole), where he had finally relieved himself entirely of what was always his heaviest inertial burden (whose superdrag-heft had similarly slowed progress in 1906), namely: competent navigational companions who could check where the party really was. The key new point (for which alibis vary, except in their incredibility): Peary's speed not only doubles as he passes north of this camp, his speed halves as he again passes the same camp going south. (Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 26 [1972] p.136.)

Added to Henry Helgesen's exposure of Peary's Cookian (ibid n.11: sextant data) finagling of his estimates of the miraculously speedy last 5 marches to “the Pole”. (Thorough details at ibid n.26 or Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.144-145.) Peary's & Cook's data-juggling had two glaring common features: [a] Three stages. (See also Byrd's 1926 double tripleness.) [b] Seriously disparate input figures led to identical computational bottom-lines before&after — THE classic symptom of backward calculation, which R.Byrd has also been directly apprehended at. As has W.Molett (modern defender of Peary & Byrd): DIO 10 [2000] p.55.

Peary denied he rode the sledges much, but all five of his final 1909 companions agree that he did. (Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 26 [1972] n.26.) Thus, Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.145 summed up Peary's 1909 navigational story: he “sped over the ice for 27 marches without knowing which way was north, pacing the distance of the last 130 miles from a sitting position. [Detouring over drifting & obstructively pressure-ridged icecakes all the while.] On [1909] 4/6-7, opining he was at his goal, he chanced solar observations that showed him to be only a mile and half short and four miles to the left, the straightest, best-gauged dead reckoning feat of all time — a veritable 413-mile Pole-in-one!”

Demonstration (via novel hybrid general/special perturbation approach) of very modest mass-upper-limits for possible circular-orbit perturbing extra-Neptunian planets. (Nature 240 p.457 [1972]. This paper [and that cited immediately following] co-authored by Max Hammerton, Cambridge University.)

Full version of previous paper, noting potential non-trivial planets' suspiciously Neptune-shy longitude-ranges. Thus, first to propose on empirical grounds that the major masses of the Solar System may well end at Neptune — a now generally accepted proposition. Mon. Not. Royal Astronomical Society 162 pp.261-270 [1973].)

Eliminated seriously discordant G. van Biesbrock 1957 Nereid-based mass for Neptune. (Ibid p.263.)

By accounting for diurnal terrestrial parallax, reduced by 1/3 the 1966 star-occultation upper-limit on Pluto's volume. (Idem.)

Highlighted several remarkable resemblances (e.g., rotation-period) between unstably-orbiting prime-Neptune-satellite Triton and Neptune-orbit-overlapping Pluto, hinting at possible support for those who've (controversially) proposed Pluto as a very-longago former-Neptune-satellite — therefore perturbationally negligible and not a genuine planet. (Idem.)
[Further speculation (not in 1973 paper): did (hypothetical) Pluto-escape occur from same (hypothetical) event that got Triton into its (unhypothetical) ultra-gradual retrograde downward spiral towards Neptune? — ensuring an (astronomically) abbreviated life for Triton.]
Note that “this [1970] paper's proposed value for Pluto's mass (1/40th of the Earth+Moon mass) is now known to have been the most accurate ever published — during the 4 1/2 decades that passed after the planet's discovery (1930), until the Pluto controversy was resolved in 1976-1978 by direct evidence.”
(DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡3 n.2 [p.19].)
[Note, too, that one will never read this undeniable fact in the output of popular science reporters (a number of whom have been directly informed of the fact, in order to test the sociology and the deliberateness), not even in the midst of non-story after non-story on Pluto's belated public demotion. (Now that the 2006/1/19 Pluto mission is safely funded & en-route.)]

Found that in 1903 and even as late as 1907 (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.52), Rob't Peary was retro-attempting to pretend (below) that he had on 1899/7/18 discovered Axel Heiberg Land. (Actually discovered in 1900 by Otto Sverdrup's 1898-1902 Norwegian expedition. Heiberg Land was Sverdrup's greatest discovery.) Peary even placed it on official US Hydrographic Office maps as “Jesup Land” (named for his biggest fiscal backer, Morris Jesup). DR's findings:

1. The USHO misplacement was influenced by Sverdrup's erroneous 1902 crude preliminary chart (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.30), when Peary clumsily altered his original 1899 map of Jesup Land (ibid p.57): moving it westward towards Heiberg and re-shaping it. (See ibid p.58: based on 1903 USHO map #2142.)
   [Even if the Peary 1899 sketch-map's “Jesup Land” coast were a real sighting, it would be pre-known Grant Land anyway (not Sverdrup's new Heiberg Land).
   Note: the handwritten 1899 label for “Jesup Land” (ibid p.57) is in a different writing style (that of the caption) than the other geographical features' labels, a further small hint that Jesup Land was a late addition to his original sketch, placed upon it when the caption was added to the sketch (later, as is obvious from the vertical fitting of the words “Coast” and “Features”), a very-last-minute add-on, to impress Peary Arctic Club Sec'y Herbert Bridgman, when on 1899/8/12 Bridgman suddenly dropped into camp (on the ship Diana), wondering what had been gained during the 1st year of Peary's 4-year expedition.]
   

2. As with his later similarly-post-faked Crocker Land sighting, Peary very exceptionally had no civilized witness to this “discovery”, either.

3. Peary's 1899/8/28 handwritten report to the Peary Arctic Club makes no mention of his later-ballyhooed alleged discovery of “Jesup Land”. So, in his 1903 speech to the Royal Geographical Society, Peary simply interpolated the “discovery” of Jesup Land into the otherwise unrevised text of the 1899 report. The 1899 original had referred only to looking northwest down upon Cannon Bay on 1899/7/18. The 1903 version unsubtly extended the sentence to read: “beyond which appeared yet more distant land.” (Ibid p.52.)

4. After the Peary Papers became available many years later, DR examined Peary's 1899/7/18 theodolite data: none of the northwest bearings fix any points beyond Cannon Bay. [Note below that such a surveying-data-vacuum applies to both of the only alleged separate-new-land discoveries of Peary's career.]
   (DIO 9.3 [1999] p.120 n.4.)

5. The real Axel Heiberg Land is nothing like either Peary map of “Jesup Land”. And “Crocker Land” doesn't even exist.

Vindication of William Herschel's claimed 1801/4/17 discovery of Uranus' satellite Umbriel (Astronomy & Space 3 [1973] pp.26-40), a discovery which is still widely (and falsely) credited to William Lassell. Reprint [rectifying A&S' omission of critical table] distributed at International Astronomical Union-Royal Astronomical Society 1981 Uranus-bicentenary meeting [in connexion with DR talk there], Bath, England; see published proceedings: Uranus & the Outer Planets [1982] p.194 [Dale Cruikshank]. See also Science News 111 p.259 [1977] and Science News 112 p.83 [1977].) Confirmation by Charles Kowal's direct photographic examination (at Mt.Palomar) of the 1801/4/17 place of Umbriel, finding there no star remotely comparable to Umbriel's brightness. [It is only fair to observe that: A&S's screwup was of the type which the Journal for the History of Astronomy is not known for making.]

The key instructive aspect of the WH discovery of Umbriel is horribly ironic: the 1851-1973 misassignment of precedence in this now-certain WH discovery occurred precisely because of said precedence's enormity.
WH's telescopes were so far ahead of his time that it took a half-century for Umbriel to be re-discovered — during which time the satellite had travelled so far that to track it back to 1801/4/17 required many post-1851 years of Umbriel-orbit-refinement before WH's sighting could be confirmed! Meantime, the assignment of Umbriel to W.Lassell had been on-the-books for so long that WL had become the undislodgeable Discoverer. It's hard to find injustice more extreme-perverse than the Umbriel case.

DR highlighted and explained in part the huge 1807-1845 gap in discovery of Solar System planets, satellites, & asteroids: zero new bodies found during that 38 year period, followed by the deluge: not a single year since Karl Hencke's 1845 discovery (of the 5th asteroid, Astraea) has passed without such a capture. (Astronomy & Space 3 [1973] pp.26-40; DIO 2.3 [1992] p.98 repeated and expanded causes for the gap & noted an earlier gap lasting over twice as long, 97 years: 1684-1781.)
[An inexcusably-neglected partial explanation (in the above DR sources) for the gap's persistence: William Herschel's retirement and passing.]

Recovered exact position of 1854/6/24 northernmost sextant observations by William Morton of the Elish Kent Kane expedition, upon the west coast of Greenland: 80°25'N, 67°.1 W (good to ordmag 1' or 1 naut.mi) — slightly short of actual Cape Constitution, the farthest-north attained (just past 80°1/2 N). The expedition's claim, of reaching beyond 81°N on that day is based upon averaging a worthless dead-reckoning position with the astronomically indicated (sextant-measured) position, 80°41'N (E.Kane Arctic Explorations 1856 vol.2 p.383.) Even the 80°41' has rightly been disbelieved for over a century. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.22.) There are several possible sources of the 1°/4 error here, and it is difficult to say whether the responsibility is primarily Morton's or Kane's — though the latter's gift for exaggeration is not a matter of speculation (idem). It is certainly suspicious that the sole defective Morton observation-set (two consistent data) is the very one which stretches the highest latitude the expedition would later falsely claim to have attained. Possible innocent sources of 6/24 observations' defectiveness (delaying shot past noon?): sickness (Morton was ill that day from eating polar bear liver), spotty weather.
Also (noted 2004/6/28): it is an odd coincidence that the latitude error is very near what would have resulted had a lower-limb shot been treated without correction for solar semi-diameter.
(Full analysis in prep for DIO 6.2.)]

Restored two key scribal errors in the 10s-place (where R.Byrd also had an innocent weakness) which infect Morton's sextant single-limb double-altitudes of the Sun for longitude, at Kane 1856 2;383&388.
The 2nd 6/26 sight (Cape Jefferson): for 67°26'.8 read 57°26'.8 (Rawlins op cit p.295). The 2nd 6/24 sight: for 59°35' read 59°45'. (Chronometer error nearly steady at 6m1/2 slow.) The data are thereby rendered consistent with Morton's account, the geography of the area, and the Sun's motion — establishing the reality (and historical utility) of data hitherto discarded as irretrievably muddled.
[The official astronomical computer of the Kane Expedition's data, Charles Schott (USCS, later USC&GS) just dropped the longitude data (the only valid material near Morton's farthest-north) in favor of the defective supposed-meridian shot — and put the valid 6/26 Cape Jefferson noon-shot at Cape Madison, while assuming the 6/24 shot (which was at neither noon nor a cape) was at Cape Jefferson. (See Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 129 “Physical Observations in the Arctic Seas by Elish Kent Kane, M.D., U.S.N. … Reduced and Discussed by Charles A. Schott, Assistant U.S. Coast Survey.” [1860] (Part 3 of full Kane Exped. scientif. data: SCK 198) p.43.
Note: it must be kept in mind that Schott did not have DR's advantage of much-later access to reliable maps of the relevant region, for comparison! Schott (like DR) worked just from the popular Kane book's data, indicating that no scientist ever saw original data-sheets on Kane's return, though expedition-astronomer August Sonntag presumably had, in the north.]

From the remains of Isaac Israel Hayes' survey-records (“Bearings” vol.8 [AGS archives]), DR estimated his actual farthest-north as Cape Collinson: 80°03'N, 70°3/4 W. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.25.) [Full analysis in prep for DIO 6.3. Meantime, our posting on Hayes has found that according to modern maps of the Cape Collinson region (which was put a few miles too far S and W on the 1960s Canadian topos), his farthest point was at 80°07'N, 70°1/2 W.]

In 1965, Oscar Villarejo (George Washington University) produced a remarkable new (long-deepsixed) manuscript by Kane Expedition chief assistant Johan Carl Petersen, showing that Petersen & Hayes had in 1854 co-led perhaps the only mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy. (H.Wouk's novel, Caine Mutiny [1951], concerning a fictional WW2 mutiny, claimed there'd been no US mutinies in at least decades. By an aural irony, the real one can be called: the Kane Mutiny.) In 1972, Villarejo's conclusion was surprise-attacked as bungled research by George Corner, head of the venerable and preeminent American Philosophical Society (and cooperative suppressor of material embarrassing to National Geographic). With the archival assistance of Stanford University librarian Patricia Palmer, DR confirmed that Villarejo was completely correct and that the bungler was instead the APS chief himself. (See Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.23&294.) And, completely typical for establishment screwups: Corner never acknowledged the slightest error — nor did he express regret (publicly or privately) at having nationally circulated a provably false charge against fellow Kane-scholar Villarejo. Lucky that sort of lordly archonal rigidity doesn't exist anymore.

First challenge to Umberto Cagni's 1900 claim to a Farthest North (81°35'N, barely ahead of Kane-Morton's 1854 claim of 81°), noting suddenness of high last-leg unverified sledging speeds (final sextant data unshared), plus the oddity that the sole (large) error in compass-variation is at the alleged “Farthest”. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.65. See above.)

Revealed that Peary's highly suspicious alleged 1906/4/21 “Farthest North” (below), supposedly at 87°N06'N, was surely a genuine first in one vital respect (for modern polar farthests): he stated no explicit longitude; nor compass variation. Peary initially mapped the “Farthest” at 45°W longitude, then altered that to 50°W. No academic society said a word. (See Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] Chap.5 p.69.) The unshared sextant data for the alleged 1906 Farthest have never been found. The 1906 April diary has evidently been eliminated by the family, but Sir Wally Herbert's remarkable 1988 recovery of a typescript of it (which conveniently stops 1 day short of the “Farthest”!) reveals that Peary was at 86°30'N (assuming his solar altitude was at apparent noon; if not: latitude even less) — before the final 4/21 dash to his “Farthest” point & right back from there to camp: 72 beeline nautical miles (more than 100 zigzag statute miles) between sleeps, over rough sea-ice where he'd formerly found it difficult to exceed 10 miles/day. (See also DIO 1.1 [1991] pp.22-23 on Peary's publicly-claimed speeds vs his diary.) [Peary modestly never even told the public of this record-breaking run!] National Geographic Society's gold medal (1906/12/15 NGS dinner) for such unverified heroics (never bemedalled by the previously admiring genuine geographical societies: American & Royal) obviously triggered the followup North Pole frauds of 1908 (Cook [whose McKinley fake was credulously hailed at the same 1906 NGS soirée]) and 1909 (Peary).

Despite being barred from the Peary Papers, DR established in 1973 by examination of all other then-available Peary 1906 documents (cairn records left in the north, 1st telegram, 1st public speech, etc) that it took until 1907 for Peary to finally discover that he had discovered — way back there in mid-1906 — what might be part of the northern-most land on Earth, which he placed on his 1907 book's map as “Crocker Land”, allegedly 1st sighted from the top of Cape Colgate on Ellesmere Island, Canada. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] Chap.5, “Faster, Farther, & Crocker”.) E.g., p.73: “Typically, the society [American Museum of Natural History] which expensively sponsored the later [1914] search for Crocker Land simply assumed without checking that Peary's mapping of it was based on scientific data (triangulation from [theodolite] azimuths taken at the [alleged 1906/6/24&28] sightings). No such measurements ever existed.” This unqualified speculation was thoroughly confirmed 15 years later: below.)

In 1973, the Peary papers were still sealed. (DR was specifically banned from them by Peary's daughter Marie, mom of predictably still-fuming&vindictively-slandering-DR-even-to-this-day Peary-grandkid Ed Stafford.) This constituted a typical (though unsuccessful) attempt to prevent DR from investigating Peary's then-sacrosanct fake claims. Nonetheless, Dennis Rawlins Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? (Luce, Washington DC) was published on 1973/6/29. Despite clumsily faked reviews by C.Lehmann-Haupt (DIO 10 [2000] p.70 n.155) and family-certified Peary-biographer Weems, the book was widely (and generally very positively) covered: Time, Atlantic, New Yorker, and dozens of leading newspapers. The Arctic Institute of North America's Arctic actually predicted that Fiction would be read by the Peary klan “on the verge of apoplexy”; and the AINA's chief deemed it convincing (Choice 1973 November), complaining only that the book made insufficient distinction between genuine scientific societies and the “pseudoscientific” National Geographic Society. (During a 1982/7/6 videotaped conversation with Sir Edward Shackleton [Leader of the House of Lords, & son of the immortal Antarctic explorer], Shackleton laughed at “pseudoscientific”, joking: “I wouldn't have called it [NGS] scientific at all.” [DIO 10 [2000] p.6.)
In 1975 a lengthy & appreciative review from the heights of genuine US geography (Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65:79-82) made it clear that the Peary claim was sliding into the academic world's dumpster.
Peary Fiction evaluated six Peary claims of pioneering achievement.
These are listed below, with evaluation at right.
Discovery of Jesup Land 1899/7/18 (above). Fake.
Discovery of Earth's farthest-north coast 1900/5/13 (Fiction p.46). Genuine.
Western-hemisphere farthest-north 1902/4/21 (Fiction p.48). Genuine.
Farthest-North 1906/4/21 (above). Fake.
Discovery of Crocker Land 1906/6/24&28. Fake.
North Pole 1909/4/6-7 (above). Fake.
A decade after Fiction's publication, “when the Peary Papers were finally opened to the public, the continuous diary records exhibited blanks (at the moment of [later-alleged] discovery) for all 4 DR-doubted claims, but contained full documentation for the 2 DR-accepted claims. Most scientists would regard such a 6-fold one-to-one correlation as something of a confirmation for the skeptical side. Not the wealthy & diehard publishing outfit run (for 5 generations) by the Hubbard-Bell-Grosvenor family under the ambitious title: the ‘National’ Geographic Society.” (DIO 1.1 [1991] p.28.)
Though the US press continues intermittently to pretend Peary succeeded, the exploring community has long since near-unanimously adopted Peary … Fiction's conservative general interpretation of all the evidence in the Polar Controversy (now pseudo-controversy). The 2005 Smithsonian book Explorers (Richard Sale & Madeleine Lewis) deftly sums up the present situation (p.34):
“Today Peary is credited with being first [to the N.Pole] by all except the experts in the field, most of whom consider his case fraudulent.”

First to point out (Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 26 [1972] pp.136-137; Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.263-264; DIO 10 [2000] p.82f) the obvious potential significance of an amazing omission by Richard Byrd & Floyd Bennett during their 1926/5/9 “North Pole” flight, an item which (since it doesn't require technical expertise to understand) all sides now agree is rather odd: Byrd's airplane had carried hundreds of US flags but neglected to drop any at “the Pole” — even when filming the monotonous ice there. (The oncoming dirigible Norge might've seen them 3 days later.) This (now widely-discussed) item alone makes Byrd's 1926 flight unique in the annals of allegedly serious nationalist exploration.

Also first to detect that National Geographic Magazine's 1926 September issue had bowdlerized its own experts' report on Byrd's “North Pole” flight, carefully eliminating (in two quite separate places) the report's date — to hide the embarrassing fact that the report was completed on 1926/6/28, well after Byrd had already received NGS' gold medal (6/23). Using such deliberate deception to rob genuine 1st N.Pole attainer Roald Amundsen (whose career's uniformly unimpeachable polar firsts top the combined records of all other explorers) followed shameful 1926 January harassment of Amundsen by NGS & New York Times, for his crime of publicly hinting that Peary's claim was suspect. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] Chap.21; DIO 10 [2000]: “Amundsen: Cheated & Uncheated” pp.55f, 82f. Note: the uncensored version of the NGS report was fortunately 1st published honestly by the New York Times on 1926/6/30 p.5.) For the flight, Byrd received an NGS gold medal. Also, the Congressional Medal of Honor: the only one in history which we know was fraudulently obtained. Later, he was even more highly honored by elevation onto the Board of the National Geographic Society.

Dennis Rawlins proposed that the FOURTH claim to the North Pole was the 1st solid one: 1926/5/12, led by Roald Amundsen (Norway) & Lincoln Ellsworth (US) — as well as the remarkable engineer and explorer Umberto Nobile (Italy), who designed the dirigible. This is one of the most a-priori-improbable historical outcomes ever. Seemingly outlandish when first proposed (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.274&280), it is by now overwhelmingly majority opinion among independent polar specialists.
[Given all of National Geographic's huge contributions to public education and entertainment, one would think that it could exhibit some generosity if not humility — and finally acknowledge the Pole-via-surface-travel priorities of Ralph Plaisted (1968) and Wally Herbert (1969) while they still live. (DIO 10 [2000] p.5 & p.61 or §N7. [Herbert died in 2007.]) In 1988, NGS' then-Editor Wilbur E. Garrett's interview on the Peary case with Boyce Rensberger of the Washington Post (1988/9/18 p.A22) stated that NGS had become increasingly aware that the Peary claim was one of those legendary “old wives tales that don't hold water”.
Yet a personal factor lingers, perhaps related to the historical reality that NGS owes its initial rise to dominance under G. Grosvenor the 1st to its promotion of the Peary N.Pole claim. (See GG1's open boast of this, quoted at Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.190.) Note that DR has no difficulty publicly appreciating NGS' considerable positives. Nor in promptly acknowledging and retracting when he's erred — even for a major foulup under public glare. Sadly, NGS (like DR's other politician-detractors) cannot bring itself to do either. Given the size-ratio of NGS and DR, it is strange and revealing to observe which side is committed to staying rigidly locked into smallness.)
Instead, unqualified public-media repetition of National Geographic's Peary N.Pole lie has been increasing in the new millennium, presumably prelude to yet another blitz of prole Pole fantasy. Evidently, the Peary Defense team has — perfectly understandably — decided to follow other churches by dodging reasoned debate and simply swamping the media with proclamations, e.g., U.S. News & World Report 2004/2/22-3/1 cover; Peary's hoax has even been injected into a history of early baseball! (ESPN Classic 2004/6/14), complete with part of an old audio record of Peary recounting his N.Pole yarn. Such ill-informed, inertial, and-or well-funded propaganda will doubtless continue. It proves nothing about geography but a great deal about what dishonestly obtained money can accomplish towards perpetual-coverup of the originating sin. (Most of a century later, DR is still the subject of attacks funded by the hefty proceeds from no less than five grandly remunerative exploration-lies.) But what classically-total waste and intellectual death such war-cycles represent: ever more angry defense-clique armies, ever more uninterested in rational balance, ever more artfully juggling evidence, leashed Experts, & far-fetched alibis (e.g., below), ever more hyper-expensively marshalling their ever more tangled webs of dissent-hating Farces of Dorkness, ever more cleverly-designed to forge reality by ever more professionally-produced propaganda-waves. The effort alone, required to maintain — for generations — such orthodoxy-crusades, is toadily awesome. By contrast, DR need only issue his intermittent findings (adjusting his views to incoming new evidence from all parties, & frankly owning up to his very occasional misses) and these spread among good people — as original truths will — with relatively modest effort on his part.]
The elimination of Peary's transparently clumsy N.Pole hoax has numerous consequences in the history of polar records:

1. The 1st explorers at the North Pole included two who were unquestionably 1st at the South Pole: Amundsen & Oskar Wisting. (Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] pp.274&280.)

2. The first party which certainly stood at the North Pole was the 6-man expedition of Pavel Gordyenko (USSR) on 1948/4/23. (DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡11 §B [p.109].) The next expedition (USAF) to do so was that of Lt. Col. Wm.P.Benedict and scientist Jos.Fletcher, 1952/5/3.

3. The first over-the-ice attainment of the Pole was by Minnesota's Ralph Plaisted in 1968. His experiences with the moving, buckled Arctic Ocean ice convinced him that Peary hadn't made it. For his openness, he risked National Geographic vengeance. (NGS indeed denigrated him: Rawlins Peary Fiction [1973] p.293.) But Plaisted enjoys seraphically expressing his most profound gratitude to National Geographic for fooling or scaring everybody else off the North Pole for nearly 60 years — Plaisted rightly figures that, otherwise, the achievement he's now lifetime-famous for would long since have already been accomplished by someone else.

4. In 1969, Wally Herbert succeeded in being the 1st to reach the North Pole by dog-sledge — and even more remarkably: his team of explorers became the 1st to make a surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean. Sir Wally has celebrated the 4/6 anniversary of Peary's alleged success by sending NGS congratulations on Peary's 1909/4/6 attainment of a Farthest North. Giving credit where it's due.

In 1974, the world's self-proclaimed top precognition-expert was shocked by finding that his own handpicked colleague had been hoaxing him. W.Levy (the legendary Joseph Rhine's specially-deputed successor, to head one of Rhine's “Duke University” ESP-labs) was caught cheating on experiments that were supposedly showing progress in finding ESP in rats. Since Rhine covered up the scandal week after week, DR was the scientist who (after a weird phonechat with Rhine's by-then-near-catatonic lab) finally informed (ratted to?) the press.
(Story 1st appeared in Baltimore Evening Sun 1974/7/24.)
DR in Skeptical Inquirer 2.1 [1977] p.74 lamented the Levy-jettisoned edge which ESP research normally has over astrology: “when examining human subjects instead of stars, you need only be naïve or careless and they will do the cheating. [Rhine-lab] Director Levy's downfall was due to his attempts to show ESP in rats, who haven't the smarts or motivation to fix scores; so he had to do it all himself, and got caught in the act.… One wonders: Did animal parapsychology have its origins in jest? Did a real psychologist once tell Rhine contemptuously that, given the quality of his laboratory's research, even mice-testing would doubtless result in impressive extra-chance scores? Only perhaps Rhine doesn't always know when his leg is being pulled. What next? Pet-rock ESP? [Well, the] 1976 January American Society for Psychical Research Newsletter offers the nonpareil straightman line: ‘There is no empirical evidence that ESP operates to a greater extent in brainless organisms.’ ”

Contacted seemingly-lost alleged witness to the most remarkably unambiguous prediction (allegedly a year in advance) by then-top-pop astrologer-psychic “Jeane Dixon” (alias Lydia Pinckert): the date of the partition of India. The reply (from Pakistan's Indonesian embassy) stated that he was suing her. (Ibid p.73.)
Further: “As any professional [astrologer] will tell you (especially come alibi-time), an error of only ten minutes in the recorded moment of birth [can foulup] the interpretation of a horoscope.… [Yet] the most famous astrologer on Earth, Jeane Dixon, lies about her birthtime by over ten years.” (Ibid p.63.)
Jeane simply dropped 14 years out of her biography, evidently because a suppressed prior marriage would clash with her Catholic-saint image.

Even before becoming a member of the board of the “Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal” (CSICOP), DR (in reaction to reams of documents sent him by Paul Kurtz, regarding Kurtz' Gauquelin neoastrology obsession) repeatedly warned several eminent Keystone-CSICOPs (1975/11/15, 12/6, 1976/3/8) not to run their much-ballyhooed but preordained-disastrous proposed test on neoastrologer Michel Gauquelin's claim that Martian celestial positions correlated to high sports ability. DR instead proposed (1975/11/15 ms & Skeptical Inquirer 2.1 [1977] p.82) a simple, surefire test: just challenge G to use his alleged discovery to beat the posted odds on sports events. CSICOP ignored (and still ignores) this idea, choosing instead to waste years of laborious wrangling over its 1st test, accomplishing little besides squandering public trust in rationalist testing & institutions. (See below.)

In 1976, DR's cat — Admiral Purry — became a full Member of the American Federation of Astrologers.

DR arranged invitation for retiring Science News Editor Ken Frazier to take over Editorship of CSICOP's Skeptical Inquirer.

In 1976, produced elementary evidence supporting knowledgeable astronomers' longtime suspicions that astrologer Claudius Indoors Ptolemy was a plagiarist: in Almajest 7.3, he claims to have observed the declinations of 18 stars; yet, any computation of declination from observation (zenith distance or altitude) is additively affected by the observer's error in his own latitude-estimate. Since Ptolemy's asymmetric-gnomon-based latitude for his hometown is wrong by −14' (same error for his Canopus temple or for the city of Alexandria), it is curious that the mean error of “his” 18 declinations (mean single-star error: merely ordmag 0°.1) is virtually null ± ordmag 1'. Similarly (excepting single-star error's smallness) for the Ancient Star Catalog. (PASP 94 [1982] pp.359-373 Table 5 column 2; DIO 2.3 [1992] p.110 item [f].)
[The moment this occurred to DR, he knew that Ptolemy's pose as a regular observer of the sky could not possibly be true. There is nothing more basic to a star-position researcher than knowing his own latitude. The actual observer of the cited 18 star declinations obviously did. See DIO 4.1 [1994] ‡3 Table 3 [p.45] & §§F5-F9 [pp.44-45].]

DR developed (1976) a startlingly simple proof of Hipparchos' long-suspected authorship of the Ancient Star Catalog. (PASP 94 [1982] pp.359-373 Fig.2.) This has since become known as the “Absent-Error-Waves-Test”, and it is apparently no longer controversial.
[Even Bradley Schaefer is reported to have finally agreed to it. But neither he nor any of the cultists defeated by it will say so publicly. BS still does not fully comprehend the math of the rest of this paper — the very part which he has denigrated for about 50pp in JHA (see DIO 12 [2002] p.14) and S&T.]
The AEW-Test was 1st sent to the Letters Editor of Science (a friend of Harvard's gifted teacher Owen Gingerich) on 1976/11/1. The only substantial reaction was “a unique anonymous 1976/11/12 phonecall from Cambridge, MA, inquiring of my wife — in my absence — regarding my academic background, researches, & projected publications. [Owen] Gingerich claims to know absolutely nothing of the incident.” (DIO 1.2 [1991] p.127).]
Following the dropping of two unexpected bombs, DR's AEW-test and the fractional-endings revelation of Johns Hopkins University APL Space Sciences Supervisor Rob't R. Newton (Crime of Claudius Ptolemy [1977] pp.245f), Ptolemists' alibis then for years oscillated wildly between [i] denying the Catalog theft, vs [ii] admitting it while alibi-cheerleading “but-thath's-OK” better than Al Franken's ultra-mellow Stuart-Smalley, on Saturday-Night-Live.
DR eventually summed up the entertainment provided by the cornered Ptolemy-defense's evidence-proof clique — the “Muffia” — as follows:
“So, the Muffia line on whether Ptolemy stole lots of the [Ancient Star] Catalog [has evolved thusly]:

1. 1974 no,

2. 1981 yes,

3. 1987 no,

4. 1990 yes,

5. 1992 [N.Swerdlow] no-yes-but-either-way-we're-still-right.

Is this a community of scholars honestly seeking a credible, consistent vision of the truth? — or are we instead enjoying: Jekyll&Hyde go vaudeville?…
But …. the foregoing seemingly inconsistent positions [a]-[e] have one glorious factor in common: all five of these analyses are as one in swearing that Ptolemy was wise and honest.…
when a cult's sacred conclusion remains the same — regardless of 180° flipflops in cult-perception of the evidential situation — then observers are justified in supposing that: the conclusion was established before the evidence was examined. Just the way Ptolemy operated.” (DIO 2.3 [1992] p.113.)

DIO 11.3 [2002] p.70:

Can [R.Newton & D.Rawlins] be accused of cruelty to dumb animals, given the tightness of the evidential vise they've closed on the poor [Ptolemy defense-corps]? To watch prominent scholars thrashing about in such pathetic credibility-death agonies is akin to viewing Animal-Rights films of stoats caught in spring traps — trying to weasel out.

Scholars who wish never to find themselves in the excruciating & logic-bending position of Believers who've spent decades cornering themselves into having to keep forever alibiing Ptolemy's Venus [DIO 11.3 [2002] entire], stellar [foregoing list], & etc pretensions [excellent summary by H.Thurston: DIO 8.1 [1998] pp.3f], are urged to ponder DIO 10 [2000] endnote 2 [pp.83-84]. Watching Muffiosi forgive sin after Ptolemy sin, [Barbara] Rawlins recalls [the 1959 film] Some Like It Hot's finale: in-love Osgood [proposes to] in-drag “Daphne”, who reluctantly protests that “she” smokes, dyes, is barren, etc, etc. But Osgood forgives all. Desperate, Daphne finally [rips off his wig &] bellows the ultimate impedimentum-crucis-bomb: I'M A MAN!!!

Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.

The experienced astronomer J.Delambre had commented with suspicious irony (History of Ancient Astronomy 1817 vol.2 p.284) that in the 5° band of sky visible from Ptolemy's Alexandria but not from Hipparchos' Rhodos (5° north of Alexandria), there are “several lovely stars”, yet not a one is found in the Ancient Star Catalog, of whose 1025 stars Ptolemy explicitly and unambiguously claimed (Almajest 7.4) he observed every star. Inspired by Delambre's perceptiveness, DR devised a statistical test (using his new atmospheric extinction formula: below) to determine simultaneously the latitude L and epoch E of the observer of the Catalog: locate the extremum of a probability-log Gaussian paraboloid mapped over L and E. The result was strongly pro-Hipparchos.

The DR paper ran just 15pp. (It was delayed for five years, following Journal for the History of Astronomy #2 Owen Gingerich's slanderous secret referee report; text: DIO 4.3 [1994] pp.133-134.) After competent refereeing, the paper was finally published: (PASP 94 [1982] pp.359-373. Then, suppression having failed, the JHA repeatedly attacked the paper during 14 seething years to the extent of over a hundred pages of astonishingly goofy [invariably Pb] articles (by Gingerich-clony-JHA-editors-boardmembers James Evans & Bradley Schaefer). But, when the smoke cleared, the skeptics' position was utterly vindicated. JHA's Catalog-fantasyship was sent to the academic bottom by the combined heavy shells of Gerd Graßhoff, Keith Pickering, and Dennis Duke. See DIO 12 [2002], especially Pickering p.4 & Fig.1 and Duke pp.33-34 & Table 2. See also 2004/5/14 International Herald Tribune p.2 on the huge increase in terrestrial atmospheric turbidity since pre-industrial times (Kenneth Chang, New York Times): precisely the DIO position and precisely the opposite of the prime foundation-position of persistent DIO-denigrator B.Schaefer (Journal for the History of Astronomy 32:1-42 [2001]; Sky&Telescope 103.2:38-44 [2002] p.40). A shockingly-overkill victory for the truth. (The Catalog debate was critical to the former Controversy because Ptolemy's stellar plagiarisms gutted defenders' then-standard alibi [that his fakes were pedagogical], since over 90% of Catalog stars were never used in any Almajest example. This is why for decades the apologist-clique went extra-nuts, launching a not-overly-consistent macro-kaleidoscope of laborious attacks & denigrations, in a doomed-from-the-outset crusade to repulse ever-mounting, ultra-damning Catalog evidence.) No serious question remains that Hipparchos was indeed the Catalog's observer. Gingerich to his credit has recently indicated Duke's analyses look convincing.
[Which they certainly are. OG's attitude is that the earlier R.Newton & DR arguments were not convincing enough to the judicious OG. DR's view: the more open-minded party usually discerns the truth earlier. But scholars of that apolitical sort seem mysteriously barred from the top-trinity editorship of OG's Journal for the History of Astronomy, whose idea of meritocracy increasingly resembles a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.]
But Evans & Schaefer have exceeded their own mentor, displaying typical establishment cult-loyalty by hiding from publicly admitting the now-undeniable truth. (This, despite repeated reminder-suggestions that honesty here could help soften some of the schisms in the field. Which points up which side thrives on schisms.) But, then, as we all know: certain kinds of people are NEVER wrong. (See also below, & “Germs”.)

In 1978, DR received (unsolicited) CSICOP cheques, to perform all the math analyses of the Committee's 2nd neoastrology test, the one which (after the earlier catastrophe) unsurprisingly disconfirmed occultism.
[DR insisted upon having no part whatever in CSICOP's sample-gathering, which was (contra certain parties' suggestions or implications) certainly unbiassed — since, to bias it, one must know how to compute the problem — but CSICOP's bigname-institution Experts (Gingerich & a now-deceased UCLA astronomy professor) couldn't, throughout the years during which the Committee had previously struggled to do so.]

Found that the considerable errors of Erathosthenes' obliquity and latitudes for Alexandria & Rhodos virtually vanish if we merely adopt the reasonable theory that his legendary Summer Solstice measurement was observed via gnomon. (Isis 73:259-265 [1982] Tables 1-3.) A textbook example of fruitfulness (see also below): one simple theory solving a multiplicity of mysteries.

Proposed that Eratosthenes' obliquity, 11/83 of a semi-circle (23°51'20", later adopted by Ptolemy) was a crude-looking expression that actually implied 1' precision, since 9/68, 11/83, & 13/98 of a semi-circle are spaced about 1' apart. (The cont'd-fraction explanation of 11/83 had earlier [1943] been proposed by Neugebauer, but [a] was later abandoned [uncited anywhere even in his massive 1975 HAMA], and [b] was not related by him to the result's precision. Details: DIO 2.1 [1992] ‡3 n.26 [p.29].)

DR's 1982 paper, “Aristyllos' Date With Vindication”, showed that the supposedly slipshod ancient Hellenistic astronomer Aristyllos had simply been misdated previously. Once correctly dated (to c.260 BC [by two-unknown least-squares analysis of his stellar declinations]: see Isis 73:259-265 [1982] p.263; and see DIO 4.1 [1994] ‡3 Table 3 [p.45]), his 6 extant stellar declinations are uniformly flawless. (Too cautiously so: see lesson discussed at DIO 7.1 [1997] p.13.)
[On 1982/6/14, DR gave the “Aristyllos' Date” paper to a scholar (K.Moesgaard) close to Centaurus Editor O.Pedersen, and by 1982/7/14 letter asked for Centaurus publication. Centaurus kindly published the paper's results in 1984 (incl. Aristyllos' new date: c.260BC), with DR's name spelled “Maeyama” — and the statistics an amateurish mess — including accomplishment of least-squares solution via trial&error instead of calculus. Luckily, DR had already (2yrs earlier) published the main new result (Aristyllos redated to c.260BC) in the world's leading history of science journal — which naturally has not prevented the ever-generous JHA clique from citing exclusively the later & mathematically-bungled publication in a lesser journal. (Details of politics & Centaurus' statistical problems: DIO 1.2 [1991] n.126 [p.125].)

Despite general modern presumption of 1° roughness in ancient geography (misimpression due to taking Ptolemy too seriously), DR compiled consistent evidence that ancient astronomers knew their observatories' latitudes to 1' accuracy. (Isis 73:259-265 [1982] p.263 n.17): “All 5 extant Hellenistic precise starplace lists show a [geographical latitude] error at about 1', although these lists are from 4 different observers [over a span of] 4 centuries, and are expressed in 2 different coordinate frames.” [Point repeated in detail in Rawlins Vistas in Astronomy 28:255-268 (1985) p.257, noting the contrast to non-observer Ptolemy's inaccuracy and his dead-giveaway −14' error of his own latitude (likely due almost entirely to typical systematic −16' error in solar observations by asymmetric vertical gnomon).]

Noted that the Ptolemy Tetrabiblos 1.12-13 astrological mate-pairing rules:
[a] Contain an obvious contradiction at celestial opposition (curiously unnoted for nearly two millennia).
[b] Are pairing heterosexuals using a homosexual rule. (Skeptical Inquirer 2.1 pp.62-83 [1977] p.69; Queen's Quarterly 91.4 [1984] p.974.)

Found that the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the esteemed but gullible (see Derek Freeman's exposures) Margaret Mead, had jimmied the occultist Parapsychological Association into the AAAS by claiming (1973/2/22 letter to DR) that the PA uses statistics just like other scientific bodies — but then (when nothing came of PA “research”) pulled a classic Bait&Switch by claiming that psi was not subject to normal statistics after all. DR: “Tophole BS it is — but science it assuredly is not” and so is utterly inappropriate to the AAAS. (Skeptical Inquirer 2.1 pp.62-83 [1977] p.83.) [The AAAS did nothing, evidently (according to behind-the-scenes information) placing a higher priority on subdivision-dues income, than on principle. Last DR heard, the PA still belonged, along with some other dues-paying churches.]

In late 1970s, inspired by a device imparted by James Randi, during a short train trip, DR produced two nearly impenetrable number-illusions: apparent 7×7 or 8×8 multiplications, requiring a nimble mathematician only ordmag a minute each to accomplish.
[A couple of DR's 8×8 demonstration experiences are mentioned at DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡3 §A3 [p.17]. One was before the Physics Dep't of San Diego State University. The other was at Sky&Telescope, for Editor Joe Ashbrook (ordmag a year before he died). Since Joe had in 1973 banished DR from S&T (and he & DR had never met), DR got into his office by pretending to be a thickly-hickly-accented Oklahoma idiot-savant named Adonis (“Don”) Purry. (Joe's warmly human reaction to the prank evaporated the breach between us.) Joe clocked the math process at under 2m. DR then revealed his true identity. Norman Sperling [among others] still recalls Joe's reaction to the shock.]
A couple of examples (each done in about 3m by a rusty DR on 2005/1/21):

Produced elementary airtight refutation of Ptolemy-worshipping Mennonite and astronomical historian Owen Gingerich's initial (1978/6/2) far-fetched Laplacian alibi-attempt to explain-away R.Newton's brilliant and entirely original fractional-endings demonstration that Ptolemy had plagiarized the 1025-star Ancient Star Catalog by simply indoor-adding 2°40' to all the stars' longitudes (R.R.Newton The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy Johns Hopkins Univ 1977 Chap.9 pp.245-254): while the Catalog stars' unaltered latitudes showed a statistical excess of 00' endings (caused by the observer's ocular or computational rounding), the Catalog's longitudes instead had an excess of 40' endings.
In reaction, Gingerich had proposed that Ptolemy could've observed the Catalog using a dozen unprecessed Hipparchos fundamental stars, and then later precessed all 1025 stars. (Instead of merely precessing the dozen at the outset: ordmag 1% of the labor!).
After publicly promoting Ptolemy's authorship of the Catalog (Science 1976/8/6) and calling him “The Greatest Astronomer of Antiquity” (idem), a cornered Gingerich was desperately attempting to defend his ill-considered original position via this weird ad-hoc ploy. DR announced the alibi's hitherto-unperceived side-effect consequence: OG's scenario would produce gross error-waves — with amplitude almost two degrees — which are in fact not found in the Ancient Star Catalog, whose mean single-star error is merely about 0°.4.
(R.Newton Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 20 [1979] pp.387-389 & Fig.2; DIO 1.2 [1991] p.131.)
Appended Note: though OG soon realized (at least temporarily) the force of such analyses and for awhile creditably agreed that Ptolemy had indeed taken the Catalog from Hipparchos, he ineducably excused this unacknowledged appropriation anyway. (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 22 [1981] pp.42-43; DIO 2.3 [1992] p.113 or ‡8 §§C31-C33.) And, incredibly, James Evans, the present professionally Gingerich-pleasing Associate Editor of OG's Journal for the History of Astronomy, in his generally useful and helpfully-explanatory textbook (Evans History & Practice of Ancient Astronomy [1998]), too-loyally and too-blindly relayed this same old longago 1981-OG-rejected alibi. Evidently, when Evans cobbled this book together, he copied its pp.270-271 proposal of this obsolete alibi from Journal for the History of Astronomy 18 (1987) p.239, where (in virtually identical words) he had temporarily entertained OG's theory as a possibility. But by 1998 he had forgotten that he himself had realized the invalidity of said alibi, just 12pp later in the same 1987 paper, using his excellent Fig.7 on its p.250. (Similarly remarkable Evans internal contradictions are admired at DIO 2.1 [1992] pp.47f.) One can see what it takes to become #3&climbing at the Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Note: a considerable fraction of the editorial rulership of the JHA is now comprised of persons who advanced themselves by fanatically (over 100pp of JHA Pb-paper junk, 1987-2001) attacking the Newton-Rawlins case for Hipparchos as true author of the Ancient Star Catalog. Now that all sides realize who was right, we find that the JHA has permanently saddled itself with scholars of the breed that sycs up to the politically powerful by feeding their delusions regarding [a] truth and [b] archons' naturally-superior ability to perceive it. In this case, successive brain-kissers, through decades of persistent articles, prominently constructed one of the most awesomely massive fallacious-argument compost-heaps in all the dreary history of careerist lawyering. What this legacy (in the JHA board's present composition) portends for the future of that self-described “premier” journal (thus grovelingly flattered by very-soon-to-be JHA-Ed.Brd.-member B.Schaefer at Sky&Telescope 103.2:38-44 [2002] p.40) is truly sad to contemplate.
[The S&T article also called the controversy over the authorship of the Ancient Star Catalog the hottest in the field throughout recent decades. The debate was won by roughly a dozen modern analyses by R.Newton, D.Rawlins, G.Graßhoff, K.Pickering, & D.Duke. Not one of these analyses debuted in the centrist JHA. That's how “premier” the obsessively political rulership of this journal actually is. I.e., one mustn't confuse socialite-centrality with intelligence, fairness, integrity, judiciousness, creativity, competence, or open-mindedness.]

Showed that ancient stellar declinations cannot tell us the secular behavior of the obliquity of the ecliptic.
(R.Newton Mon. Not. Royal Astronomical Society 186 p.231 [1979].)

Designed a combo-sleight card-illusion apt to a group. (Ordinary playing-card deck. No confederates.)
Card chosen by person#1 & and written on hidden paper. Card reinserted into pack. Person#2 writes digit n on piece of paper, which is then torn-up and the fragments burned. Person#3 shuffles pack. Person#2 announces digit n. Person#1 unfolds hidden paper to reveal chosen card. Person#4 finds that this card is the nth card in the deck.

Discovered that the Hipparchos-Strabo klimata (indoor-computed longest-day zones [clumps] of cities near the same latitude parallel: see the Ptolemy Geographical Directory Book 8, & Vistas in Astronomy vol.28 pp.255-268 [1985] pp.260f) could be solved by assuming Hipparchos' use of rigorous sph trig, using accurate obliquity 23°2/3. A search of the literature found that classicist Aubrey Diller had made and published the same discovery in 1934, but it had been cast aside by the Otto Neugebauer Muffia — abusively attacked by Neugebauer himself both privately (in an arrogant 1934 letter to Diller) and publicly, in Neugebauer's 1975 Hist Anc Math Astron p.734 n.14. (Neugebauer was ired because he himself had a solution which attempted to show a connection of Hipparchos to Babylonian mathematical techniques — and Neugebauer thought his life's prime achievement was establishing that Babylonians had been behind Greek math astronomy.) DR immediately (1979/11/26) contacted Diller, whom he did not then know. “One of my most cherished memories is Diller's expression of gratitude for, as he later put it, having a long-suppressed theory rescued 45 years later ‘by a phone call from a stranger in San Diego’.” (DIO 4.2 [1994] p.56 n.7.)

Diller's 1934 paper had found fits for 8 of 11 klimata. DR pointed out a klima (not noted by Diller) for longest-day = 19h. It fit the theory perfectly: 42800 stades. This raised Diller's score to 9-out-of-12.

By assuming Hipparchos had rounded his klimata to the nearest 5' (same precision as all latitudes & longitudes in Ptolemy's Geographical Directory) DR then found that the Diller sph-trig theory's rate of perfect fits to the ancient klimata-data went from 9-out-of-12 to 11-out-of-12: ibid n.10 & Table 1 (Actually, Diller effectively has a perfect score, since the one non-fitting site Meroe, was anciently fudged to fit a very-round-number tradition. Strabo 2.5.7 (H.Jones transl, emph added): “Syene must lie in the center of” the 10000 stade distance from Meroe to Alexandria.) [This, vs merely 6-out-of-12 for the Neugebauer theory of HAMA p.305. Neugebauer's argument has two key flaws: [a] He falsely counts a city (Alexandria) as a klima. [b] His scheme's failure at the 15h1/2 klima is not mentioned. [c] In arguing (HAMA p.305) for a constant 3rd-difference arithmetic scheme as the klimata's basis, he did not realize that such schemes obviously can always be found which will track trig-based functions over a limited range. The fact that his theory departed consistently & monotonically from the data, as one went south of his Alexandria sleight, should have clued him to the inadequacy of his theory.
In the decade-plus since the Diller-DR tight-fitting solution was published in clearly tabulated form in Table 1 at DIO 4.2 [1994] p.56, the Journal for the History of Astronomy (details at DIO 11.1 [2002] p.26 n.1) has yet to cite Table 1. (What is the JHA cult so afraid of?) Further confirmatory yet: amazingly, a 13th Hipparchos-Strabo klima-datum was discovered by DR in 2002 — it utterly & precisely backs up Diller-Rawlins. And contradicts the Neugebauer theory more than any other klima. Centrists should have been ready for this, not vulnerable to it. See DIO 10 [2000] end-note 21 [p.105].
[News of the 13th klima's discovery has been mailed (2004 December, in DIO 11.1 [2002] p.26 n.1) to all parties related to this issue. We are not holding our breath waiting for JHA citation of this shockingly exact confirmation. So DR will follow-up the Diller-DR predictive success (via the 13th klima) by lodging a further prediction: if this matter is ever mentioned at all in JHA, look for a classically-Muffiose weasel-alibi. The Muffia is simply too deeply-in (73 years as of 2007!) to EVER admit the perfectly obvious truth of the Diller-DR theory, since no confirmation of anything DR achieves is ever welcome at that obsessively vindictive journal — which actually thinks it's hurting others by thus unmistakably impressing upon astonished genuine scholars its pathetic predictability (and perfectly-understandable) insecurities. See DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡1 §J6 [p.25]: “in any [history-of-astronomy] controversy, the scholar who does business (and soirées) with the most archons, is the one who's right. No exceptions to this rule can be admitted without implicitly defiling archonal majesty, most dangerously by creating impious infirmity (even skepticism) about whether academe REALLY NEEDS ARCHONS. Remember On the Waterfront's labor-gangster-boss, Johnny Friendly, reacting to the horror of just one person's defiance of his fiscal control of commerce on the docks: ‘First, [this guy] crosses me in public and gets away with it, then the next joker — pretty soon, I'm just another fella around here.’ ”]

Designed and distributed (starting 1979/6/15: to the editors of Griffith Observer [Ed Krupp] & Observatory [Roger Griffin]) the first accurate zenith-to-horizon compact (non-series) atmospheric-refraction-calculation format (altered cotangent-argument), for both apparent & true celestial altitudes. Format now adopted world-wide in standard astronomy-by-pocket-calculator manuals. (First published by DR in PASP 94 p.363 eqs.8&8a [1982 April]. Refinements: DIO 2.1 [1992], [in notes to Tycho paper]. Further refinements by Keith Pickering: DIO 12 [2002]. And see below. [After Sky&Telescope in 1986 credited the format — for both apparent & true altitudes — to two late-comers, DR pointed out to S&T's author (Roger Sinnott) that DR's PASP publication was first with both. Finding that (after weeks) it unfortunately could not find any earlier publication of either, S&T naturally published no correction whatever. In 2000, DR again reminded S&T of this situation, but again no correction was made. DR must thank Brad Schaefer for (after a few DR reminders) finally publishing the truth (actually getting this past the alert Editor-for-Life) at Journal for the History of Astronomy 32:1-42 [2001] n.32).

In 1980, Dennis Rawlins recovered the oldest data that survive in continued-fraction format. (DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡3 §D1 [p.35].) This discovery (which has never been seriously controversial) was accomplished via decipherment of long-puzzling [see O.Neugebauer HAMA 1975 pp.601-602] Vatican Collection tables of Greek yearlengths. (DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡3 Tables 1 & 2 [p.31]. Lingering dissent is merely over minor details — the cont'd-fraction interpretation itself seems tacitly accepted: DIO 11.1 [2002] ‡1 n.13 [p.8].)

The numbers emerging from the above-cited discovery led to DR's realization that Aristarchos is the first astronomer we know was aware of precession (establishing a crude too-low value [1°/century], later widely copied), 1 1/2 centuries before the up-to-now-credited astronomer, Hipparchos — who, incidentally, used the very-same very-wrong value. (This analysis and the preceding one were multiply-refereed & accepted [see 1982 March Isis advertisement] in 1981 by Journal for the History of Astronomy, then were long suppressed by the JHA's esteamed Editor-for-Life. Details of discovery & of JHA censorship: DIO 9.1 [1999] pp.30f.)

Challenged longtime acceptance of the famous but patently fishy legend that Eratosthenes (academic-pol-polymath & as energetic a kisser of the regal Arsinoë as his modern counterparts) measured the Earth's size by having royal pacers step off the 5000 stades (500 nautical miles) from Alexandria to Aswan, a literally incredible tale, allegedly involving laborious and dangerous north-south desert travel, since the Nile isn't straight.
[The myth could be just a linguistic mangling of an original account which expressed the distance as not only 5000 stades but perhaps 3 million royal paces, thus setting up transformation (in the retelling) of a length-unit “royal pace” into the act of royal-pacing.]
DR revealed three physically-much-easier techniques (one by Joseph Gerver; the others by DR, who computed the refraction-caused errors for all three), each of which would lead to one of the two hugely disparate but multiply-attested standard ancient Earthsize values (disagreeing by a factor of 7-to-5): those of Eratosthenes (1/6 high) & Poseidonios (1/6 low). [Mean is almost exactly correct but is unattested in antiquity.] Each's value is explained virtually on-the-nose by a common single theory (analogous situations above and below): the effect (upon two easy stay-at-home methods) of atmospheric refraction, which gives horizontal lightrays a curvature 1/6 of the Earth's curvature.
(American Journal of Physics 1979 February; Scientific American 1979 May; Archive for History of Exact Sciences 1982; DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡1 n.47 [p.11]. And see Chap.1's sunset-frontispiece & 4th boxed Sample-Problem [scrupulously cited to DR] in 1990s editions of long-standard college physics textbook, Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, & Walker, explaining the double-sunset method, which on average will find an Earth-size too low by 1/6, due to refracted horizontal light-rays' curvature being 1/6 of the Earth's.)

Found that, contrary to Ptolemy's claims & modern orthodoxy (details: ibid n.30), the Almajest's mean motions of the planets were founded upon period-relations. (First announced in 1980/4/13 letter to Owen Gingerich, recently recovered by OG — letter confirmed via Dennis Duke's uniquely fearless inquiries of Gingerich.) Full math details: DIO 11.2 [2003]; note Alex Jones' brilliant correcting clinchers, which doubly won DIO's 1st B. L. van der Waerden Award for Historical Induction].) For Mercury, DR's fit is better than one part in a trillion. (Ibid ‡4 §D2 [p.37].) [More recently, DR has proposed the novel theory that all ancient lunar periods were also based upon integral (or in 1 case: half-integral) period-relations (eclipse-cycles). The analogy is obvious. Except to a few hardy Babylonianists.]

DR discovered the debate-snuffer implications of Ptolemy's large mid-career alterations to three elements of his Mercury orbit (changed between the 146-147AD Canobic Inscription and the later Almajest), while Ptolemy simultaneously did not change by so much as 1 part in ordmag a trillion Mercury's mean motion n nor change by even 1' Mercury's mean-longitude-at-epoch ε. (Taking for convenience the epoch to be the time of Ptolemy's own alleged observation, 139/5/17. Note that Ptolemy's precisions are 6 sexagesimal places and 1', respectively.) The insuperable problem here for his modern apologists is that his elaborate mathematical Almajest 9.10 “proof” of n & ε from alleged pre-Canobic Inscription observations uses his NEW Almajest  elements. But, compared to a parallel derivation using the three Canobic Inscription values for these elements, the Almajest 9.10 math produces drastically different n, as well as shifting ε by 5°13', that is three hundred and thirteen arcminutes. The latter is rather a sensational circumstance, given that Ptolemy isn't changing ε even by one arcminute. Therefore, said Almajest  “proof” is fraudulent, since Ptolemy (earlier, in the Canobic Inscription) had already written that he had adopted the IDENTICAL n & ε values he later “proves” at Almajest 9.10.
As just seen above, the n had anyway been rigorously computed not from the alleged observations Ptolemy put on display in his “proof”, but instead (DIO 11.2 [2003] eq.14 [p.37]) from a period-relation — a no longer controversial DR 1980 discovery, since it matches Ptolemy's n to the full precision he expresses: ordmag 1 part in a trillion.
[DIO 11.2 [2003] n.37 [p.49]. The Mercury revelation is what convinced van der Waerden that there was no longer a serious controversy over whether Ptolemy was a liar: see DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡6 n.37 [p.65]. It was originally published (thanks to C.Wilson) at Rawlins Amer J. Physics 55:235-239 1987 pp.236-237 item (5).
We see that the top establishment gods of ancient astronomy history — O.Pedersen, O.Neugebauer, O.Gingerich — had completely screwed up this area (sources at ibid n.30 [note that DR solved just 3 of the planets]), sometimes by alleged computation which was never in fact performed. (Known to Neugebauer's able and appalled associate Olaf Schmidt.) Thus, for years, the ancient astronomy establishment stubbornly promoted what a friend of Rob't Newton used to call a subtraction from the sum of human knowledge. Again, no surprises.]

First to point out (1980/4/13 letter to O.Gingerich p.Q2; publ. at Queen's Quarterly 91.4 [1984] p.984, and American Journal of Physics 55 pp.235-239 [1987] p.237) that the Almajest 2nd century AD tables for Mars' mean synodic motion were so well-founded that they still TODAY provide a mean synodic position accurate to 0°.4, which is more accurate than the forged “observations” Ptolemy claims he based his Mars theory upon! — a disjunct strongly hinting that he was not the creator of these excellent tables.

Similarly first to note (Queen's Quarterly 91.4 [1984] p.984) that the ancient (incl. Almajest) value for the Moon's synodic motion was also extremely accurate. (Full details in 1981 DR paper, finally published after 18 yrs of JHA suppression at DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡3 n.24 [p.37].)

Likewise (double-idem) for solar sidereal motion. Later noted: “Aristarchos' sidereal yearlength was ordmag 100 times more accurate than his tropical yearlength”. (DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡1 n.38 [p.10].)

Published much-resented “sTARBABY” (Fate [1981]), detailing how the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal ineptly ignored warnings and bungled its biggest Scientific Investigation (its middle name) — then used threats, invention, censorship, and slander to try (just as ineptly) to cover up its bungle. And then to coverup the coverup. And then….

Showed that Galileo's observation of Neptune gave little indication of a meaningful residual. (Nature 290 p.164 [1981]. Conclusion supported by independent analysis of CalTech-JPL' Myles Standish at idem.)

Brought together for the 1st time all 8 unwitting pre-discovery observations of Neptune, in 1981/1/12 letter to Scientific American, a list which extends from the Kowal-recovered, now-famous Galileo observation (1613/1/28 Florence) through Johann von Lamont's two now-nearly-forgotten recordings (1846/9/7&11 Munich, only a few days before Neptune's 9/23 Berlin discovery). Not published. (Until DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡7 §B2 [p.98].)

Showed that Pierre Lemonnier's long-denigrated twelve misses of Uranus had nothing to do with “paradigms” (as Thos.Kuhn had proposed) or incompetence (astronomers' durable myth) — but merely to the fact that the standard low power of his transit instrument couldn't reveal Uranus' disk. The long-superchuckled-at circumstance that he recorded Uranus' place on four consecutive nights (1769/1/20-23) without recognizing its motion turns out to be due to the unfortunate coincidence that Uranus was at a stationary point. So: Lemonnier got lampooned for two centuries for not observing the motion of a planet — that virtually wasn't moving. (Astronomy 9.9 [1981] pp.24-28: “The Unslandering of Sloppy Pierre”. [The present posting corrects an occasional typo.] DR conclusion [p.26]: “If an academic ever takes leave to draw lessons from a consideration of your life, hie thee to a libel lawyer or (the budget option) seek sanctuary on an undiscovered planet.”)

Produced 1st accurate zenith-to-horizon compact expression for computing aerosol extinction: altered cosecant argument. (First publication anywhere: same as above [eq.6]. [See refinements of constants by Pickering at DIO 12 [2002] ‡1 n.39 [p.22].] All three altered-argument equations sent to PASP in 1980 during revisions of PASP 94 [1982] pp.359-373: see eqs.6, 8, & 8a.)

In 1980, Dennis Rawlins detected and throughly analysed the earliest extant map (3rd century BC) rendered in spherical coordinates. (Archive for History of Exact Sciences 26.3:211-219 [1982]. Transmitted by B.L.van der Waerden.)

Proposed (ibid p.216) that this “Nile Map” might well have been the father [or uncle] of Eratosthenes' famous 5000 stades distance from Aswan to Alexandria, implying unwitting circularity in his legendary Earth-measure experiment. If the Nile Map's scale was based upon an Earth-size measure derived from the mountain-top method, then Eratosthenes' inexplicable Earth-measure may in truth have ultimately been based upon the mountain-top method, which, after all, closely explains the large positive error in his result.

Showed that the tidal effect upon humans of the greatest planetary line-up in centuries (which was being heavily pre-hyped by astrologers) was so weak that one could counter its net effect by just getting a little closer to the Earth — merely sitting would do the trick.
(New York Times 1982/3/10 editorial page: “Sit Down”.)

Created and programmed now-standard method for finding tidal ellipsoid of spherical body affected by multiple gravitating point-masses in three dimensions. The extremum problem's spherical-constraint Lagrange-multipliers are eigenvalues (directly provided by the cubic secular equation [whose 1st-order term (the invariant trace) is conveniently null]), each proportional to an extremal tide (maximum, saddle-point, minimum) along one of the three axes of symmetry (of the disturbed body's equipotential surface), which are the three associated eigenvectors. (Geophysical J. Royal Astronomical Society 69 pp.265-271 [1982]; program at p.271; p.268 Table 1 displays its rigorously predicted 1964-1991 solar tides, due to the combined tidal influence of all Solar System planets.) High-precision confirmation: Sky&Telescope 2000 May, and letter 2000 Sept pp.14-16. [Previous investigators needlessly (as in other problems) used trial&error (or worse); by contrast, DR's program instantly and analytically finds the principal axes & extremal tides.]

In 1983 ms (widely circulated & submitted to QJRAS) p.h13, noted that though Venus' Almajest mean motion is dreadful as it stands, it may hold a clue to competent ancients' appropriately very accurate sidereal period-relation for Venus: 299 synodic revs = 478 sidereal years. Standard ancient sidereal→tropical transformation (numerous examples computed out at DIO 11.2 [2003]; DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡1 §§I5-I13 eqs.21&27-31 [pp.22-24]) of this via ancients' 1°/cy precession (ibid eq.26), would produce 309 synodic revs = 494 tropical years (taking Metonic years as tropical — normal ancient presumption). [Since the spectacular reconstructive success of eq.31 of DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡1, ancient use of such transformations can no longer be regarded as merely conjectural.] DR speculates that Ptolemy (or his source) simply misidentified this excellent tropical relation and mis-expressed it as 309 synodic revs = 494 sidereal years — which is in fact the computational basis of the Almajest Venus mean motion tables (as shown in DIO 11.2 [2003] §E [pp.37-38]). Venus' periodic return in 309 synodic revs is also anciently attested. (See O.Neugebauer HAMA 1975 p.605 n.11's miscontruing.)
The foregoing remarkably neat explanation of the (seemingly) terrible period-relation underlying Venus' Almajest mean motion: cited at, e.g., Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 17.4 [1985] p.852; DIO 11.3 [2002] ‡6 §C3 [p.76].
By DR's interpretation of the Almajest Venus motion, ancients chose the very best sub-millennial period-relations for both Mars' & Venus' mean synodic motions — both admirably accurate (to ordmag 1'/century). This was perfectly possible anciently via careful use of stationary-point data for integral-returns centuries apart.

Announced at the 1983/6/4 Aarhus University that whether Ptolemy faked observations was no longer a legitimate controversy, since in Almajest 10.1&2 he had faked greatest elongations of Venus so carelessly as to date the 136 AD Venus greatest evening elongation 37 days before&after itself! In brief, Muffia-hero Ptolemy gives the very same event two different dates (136/12/25 vs 136/11/18), two different positions (longitude 319°3/5 vs longitude 282°5/6), & two different elongations (47°8/15 vs 47°1/3): astronomical history's clumsiest fake by far. (Reported: R.Newton Origins of Ptolemy's Astronomical Tables [1985] pp.9-13.)
Unsurprisingly, Gingerich (whose warm personal generosity towards the numerous fellow